TRACK GERRYMANDERS

“So the court says the Voting Rights Act only kicks in if lawmakers had intended to discriminate against minority voters. Whatever the effect of, whatever the results of the map are, only intentional racial discrimination, which is very hard to prove what was in the lawmakers' heads counts.”

“I think the clearest political outcome of today's decision is that these redistricting wars that started in the middle of the decade, you know, which is very rare, are gonna spiral into 2028, and they're gonna expand. Already, Democrats in New York and Colorado have begun to explore the process of redrawing their maps ahead of 2028. And today, governor Hochul indicated, I'm gonna continue on that.”

“Famously, justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2013 responding to this same kind of argument said, that may be so, but you don't throw away your umbrella just because you're not getting wet. And her suggestion was that it was because the Voting Rights Act was still in place that these gains could be sustained.”

“Justice Elena Kagan in dissent on behalf of herself and the two other Democratic appointees, justices Sotomayor and Jackson, has a completely different view. She wrote that the Voting Rights Act was, quote, born of the literal blood of union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe inspiring change, bringing this nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality, and it has been repeatedly and overwhelmingly reauthorized by the people's representatives in congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed, not the members of this court.”

“The Supreme Court did further and, in a sense, final damage to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, probably the greatest legislative achievement of the civil rights movement, which was meant to protect minority voting power. So it's meant to stop southern officials from using all kinds of methods from violence to poll taxes, to literacy tests, to grandfather clauses, to keep individual black voters from the voting booth. But it also meant to ensure that minority voters as a group had the collective power or at least the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.”

“And that's in Florida. Now, earlier this week, Governor Ron DeSantis introduced a new map, and it's in a very aggressive gerrymander. It would eliminate four of the eight Democratic districts currently in the state. Now, in justifying drawing new maps, governor DeSantis had pointed to this looming decision before the court as a reason that the state needed to redraw its maps ahead of the midterms.”

“But let's look at Tennessee to start. There, Republicans have been loud today, including senator Marsha Blackburn, who's also running for governor, in calling for the state to dismantle its remaining Democratic district ahead of the midterm elections. So this district in the Southwestern part of the state is the lone Democratic district in Tennessee. It encompasses Memphis and is a majority minority district with roughly 60% of a black voting age population, and a major black population city like Memphis in there. So if Republicans were to take a ruthless gerrymander to that city, they'd be splitting apart these black voters into a number of other Republican districts.”

“We've spent most of this conversation talking about how this could impact Congress. But, today's ruling could impact state legislative lines and county lines. This ruling also creates an opportunity for state lawmakers to redraw their own districts, or local city and municipal districts to try and gain a partisan edge. It's still about power, but in doing so, they would be decimating some of these black majority districts. And, those local races are important because it creates a pipeline of lower elected officials, lower black elected officials, getting an opportunity to eventually climb the political ladder and eventually end up in Congress.”